ARTISTS
Suzanne Valadon
The Centre Pompidou is devoting a monograph to Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938), a bold and iconic artist, and one of the most important of her generation. She was on the fringes of the dominant trends of her time - cubism and abstract art were in their infancy, while she ardently defended the need to paint reality - placing the nude, both female and male, at the centre of her work and depicting bodies without artifice or voyeurism.
Suzanne Valadon had not been the subject of a monograph since the one devoted to her by the Mus茅e National d鈥橝rt Moderne in 1967. Presented at the Centre Pompidou-Metz in 2023 (鈥淪uzanne Valadon. A World of Her Own鈥�), then at the Mus茅e des Beaux-arts de Nantes (2024) and the Museu Nacional d鈥橝rt de Catalunya (2024), the tribute to this ostensibly modern artist, free of the conventions of her time, continues at the Centre Pompidou in 2025, enhanced by new loans and new archives.
The exhibition showcases this exceptional figure and highlights her pioneering, but often underestimated, role in the birth of artistic modernity. It reveals the great freedom of this artist, who did not really adhere to any particular movement, except perhaps her own. The exhibition of almost 200 works draws on a wealth of national collections, in particular the largest, that of the Centre Pompidou, but also from the Mus茅e d鈥橭rsay and the Mus茅e de l鈥橭rangerie.
Exceptional loans from the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Fondation de l鈥橦ermitage and major private collections complete the exhibition. It focuses on the artist鈥檚 two favourite media, drawing and painting, with particular emphasis on her graphic work, which is explored in depth through the presentation of a large number of drawings that have rarely been shown before.
It also provides an opportunity to explore an artistic moment at the heart of the transition between the collections of the Mus茅e d鈥橭rsay and the Mus茅e National d鈥橝rt Moderne.
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The Centre Pompidou is devoting a monograph to Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938), a bold and iconic artist, and one of the most important of her generation. She was on the fringes of the dominant trends of her time - cubism and abstract art were in their infancy, while she ardently defended the need to paint reality - placing the nude, both female and male, at the centre of her work and depicting bodies without artifice or voyeurism.
Suzanne Valadon had not been the subject of a monograph since the one devoted to her by the Mus茅e National d鈥橝rt Moderne in 1967. Presented at the Centre Pompidou-Metz in 2023 (鈥淪uzanne Valadon. A World of Her Own鈥�), then at the Mus茅e des Beaux-arts de Nantes (2024) and the Museu Nacional d鈥橝rt de Catalunya (2024), the tribute to this ostensibly modern artist, free of the conventions of her time, continues at the Centre Pompidou in 2025, enhanced by new loans and new archives.
The exhibition showcases this exceptional figure and highlights her pioneering, but often underestimated, role in the birth of artistic modernity. It reveals the great freedom of this artist, who did not really adhere to any particular movement, except perhaps her own. The exhibition of almost 200 works draws on a wealth of national collections, in particular the largest, that of the Centre Pompidou, but also from the Mus茅e d鈥橭rsay and the Mus茅e de l鈥橭rangerie.
Exceptional loans from the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Fondation de l鈥橦ermitage and major private collections complete the exhibition. It focuses on the artist鈥檚 two favourite media, drawing and painting, with particular emphasis on her graphic work, which is explored in depth through the presentation of a large number of drawings that have rarely been shown before.
It also provides an opportunity to explore an artistic moment at the heart of the transition between the collections of the Mus茅e d鈥橭rsay and the Mus茅e National d鈥橝rt Moderne.
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In the 1880s and 鈥�90s, when Suzanne Valadon was in her twenties and working odd jobs around Paris, she began sitting for Renoir and taking drawing and etching classes with Degas.
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